Ram Circus An Animal Act

MIKE BERARDINO COMMENTARY

ST. LOUIS — The trapeze act wasn't working smoothly the way it usually does. The guys on the high wire were a little shaky. For once nobody seemed all that jazzed about getting shot out of a cannon.

So Mike Martz, controversial ringmaster of the so-called Greatest Show on Turf, swallowed hard Sunday afternoon and let the air out of the big top.

He turned the elephants loose, untied tails from trunks right there on the sawdust, and the rumbling stampede didn't stop until the St. Louis Rams had punched their second Super Bowl ticket in the past three years.

"Hey," Rams guard Adam Timmerman, one of those powerful pachyderms, said with a grin, "we can run on turf as well."

Count the Philadelphia Eagles as believers. They saw their season end with a 29-24 loss in the NFC Championship Game at the Dome at America's Center, which was painful enough.

But it was the way they lost that left the visitors shaking their heads in disgust as they left this deafening cauldron where they blast classic rock and other ear-splitting ditties between seemingly every play.

The Eagles held NFL Most Valuable Player Kurt Warner largely in check, and it wasn't enough. They took a 17-13 lead into the second half, and it wasn't enough. They went eyeball to eyeball for four quarters with the NFL's most explosive team, and it wasn't enough.

Marshall Faulk made sure of that with 159 rushing yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Faulk, playing with an injured wrist and elbow, ran with intensity and grit. But with holes this big, Peter Falk could have moved the chains.

"They really ran the ball well today," Eagles defensive end Hugh Douglas said. "That's not what they do, but today they did it really well. When the smoke cleared, the better man was left standing."

The Rams playing smash mouth? Hush your mouth.

But there it was on full display down on the plastic carpet.

Trailing at the half for just the third time all season, the Rams opened the third quarter by giving the ball to Faulk. Or was it John Riggins suddenly wearing No. 28?

"Coming out for the second half, we made a statement," Timmerman said. "We said, `Hey, we're going to win this game however we're going to win it. Pretty, ugly, whatever it is, we're going to do it.'''

Neither of Faulk's touchdowns was highlight-quality. Rather they were simple plunges into the teeth of the defense, both from the 1-yard line.

On the first score, in fact, the Eagles ripped Faulk's helmet clean off his head. He was left lying there, back to the ground, trapped in a pile of bodies, the side judge's arms in the air signaling touchdown.

Finally, as one of Faulk's linemen came to his rescue and pulled his bare-headed self out of danger, you couldn't help but notice the expression on Faulk's face, plain as day. He was laughing.

"That was a statement, too," Rams tackle Rod Jones said of the call. "The statement was, `We're here and we came to play.'"

Meanwhile the Rams' defense was getting down and dirty as well, holding the Eagles to three straight three-and-outs to open the second half.

Until Donovan McNabb hit a fourth-down pass to ignite a late Eagles rally, the visitors had run 12 plays in the second half and gained 19 yards.

"Hopefully this sends a message to the rest of the league and everyone else," Jones said. "We're not just a passing team, we're not a one-dimensional team. We've got a lot of options and we're going to use them."

These Rams also hope people will stop tossing the F-word in their face. That's right, they're sick and tired of hearing how they rely more on finesse and speed than blood and guts.

Why, the way people talk about these Rams, you'd almost think they were playing badminton instead of football.

"There's always going to be naysayers as far as the finesse thing, I guess," Timmerman said. "There's always going to be somebody saying that. You can't put a stop to it. But we can score and move the ball really however we want to. We've proved that all year."

Never more than Sunday, when the rampaging elephants scarfed down all the peanuts they could find, and then some.